AT different periods dogmatic belief is more or less common. It arises
in different ways, and it may change its object and its form; but under
no circumstances will dogmatic belief cease to exist, or, in other words,
men will never cease to entertain some opinions on trust and without discussion.
If everyone undertook to form all his own opinions and to seek for truth
by isolated paths struck out by himself alone, it would follow that no
considerable number of men would ever unite in any common belief.

But obviously without such common belief no society can prosper; say,
rather, no society can exist; for without ideas held in common there is
no common action, and without common action there may still be men, but
there is no social body. In order that society should exist and, a fortiori,
that a society should prosper, it is necessary that the minds of all the
citizens should be rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas;
and this cannot be the case unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions
from the common source and consents to accept certain matters of belief
already formed.

If I now consider man in his isolated capacity, I find that dogmatic
belief is not less indispensable to him in order to live alone than it
is to enable him to co-operate with his fellows. If man were forced to
demonstrate for himself all the truths of which he makes daily use, his
task would never end. He would exhaust his strength in preparatory demonstrations
without ever advancing beyond them. As, from the shortness of his life,
he has not the time, nor, from the limits of his intelligence, the capacity,
to act in this way, he is reduced to take on trust a host of facts and
opinions which he has not had either the time or the power to verify for
himself, but which men of greater ability have found out, or which the
crowd adopts. On this groundwork he raises for himself the structure of
his own thoughts; he is not led to proceed in this manner by choice, but
is constrained by the inflexible law of his condition. There is no philosopher
in the world so great but that he believes a million things on the faith
of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.

This is not only necessary but desirable. A man who should undertake
to inquire into everything for himself could devote to each thing but little
time and attention. His task would keep his mind in perpetual unrest, which
would prevent him from penetrating to the depth of any truth or of making
his mind adhere firmly to any conviction. His intellect would be at once
independent and powerless. He must therefore make his choice from among
the various objects of human belief and adopt many opinions without discussion
in order to search the better into that smaller number which he sets apart
for investigation. It is true that whoever receives an opinion on the word
of another does so far enslave his mind, but it is a salutary servitude,
which allows him to make a good use of freedom.

A principle of authority must then always occur, under all circumstances,
in some part or other of the moral and intellectual world. Its place is
variable, but a place it necessarily has. The independence of individual
minds may be greater or it may be less; it cannot be unbounded. Thus the
question is, not to know whether any intellectual authority exists in an
age of democracy, but simply where it resides and by what standard it is
to be measured.

I have shown in the preceding chapter how equality of conditions leads
men to entertain a sort of instinctive incredulity of the supernatural
and a very lofty and often exaggerated opinion of human understanding.
The men who live at a period of social equality are not therefore easily
led to place that intellectual authority to which they bow either beyond
or above humanity.

They commonly seek for the sources of truth in themselves or in those
who are like themselves. This would be enough to prove that at such periods
no new religion could be established, and that all schemes for such a purpose
would be not only impious, but absurd and irrational. It may be foreseen
that a democratic people will not easily give credence to divine missions;
that they will laugh at modern prophets; and that they will seek to discover
the chief arbiter of their belief within, and not beyond, the limits of
their kind.

When the ranks of society are unequal, and men unlike one another in
condition, there are some individuals wielding the power of superior intelligence,
learning, and enlightenment, while the multitude are sunk in ignorance
and prejudice. Men living at these aristocratic periods are therefore naturally
induced to shape their opinions by the standard of a superior person, or
a superior class of persons, while they are averse to recognizing the infallibility
of the mass of the people.

The contrary takes place in ages of equality. The nearer the people
are drawn to the common level of an equal and similar condition, the less
prone does each man become to place implicit faith in a certain man or
a certain class of men. But his readiness to believe the multitude increases,
and opinion is more than ever mistress of the world. Not only is common
opinion the only guide which private judgment retains among a democratic
people, but among such a people it possesses a power infinitely beyond
what it has elsewhere. At periods of equality men have no faith in one
another, by reason of their common resemblance; but this very resemblance
gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judgment of the public; for
it would seem probable that, as they are all endowed with equal means of
judging, the greater truth should go with the greater number.

When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually
with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any
one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows and
to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed
by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality
that renders him independent of each of his fellow citizens, taken severally,
exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater amber.
The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power,
which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others
to its beliefs, but imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of
everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual
intelligence.

In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of
ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from
the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there adopts
great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without
inquiry, upon public trust; and if we examine it very closely, it will
be perceived that religion itself holds sway there much less as a doctrine
of revelation than as a commonly received opinion.

The fact that the political laws of the Americans are such that the
majority rules the community with sovereign sway materially increases the
power which that majority naturally exercises over the mind. For nothing
is more customary in man than to recognize superior wisdom in the person
of his oppressor. This political omnipotence of the majority in the United
States doubtless augments the influence that public opinion would obtain
without it over the minds of each member of the community; but the foundations
of that influence do not rest upon it. They must be sought for in the principle
of equality itself, not in the more or less popular institutions which
men living under that condition may give themselves. The intellectual dominion
of the greater number would probably be less absolute among a democratic
people governed by a king than in the sphere of a pure democracy, but it
will always be extremely absolute; and by whatever political laws men are
governed in the ages of equality, it may be foreseen that faith in public
opinion will become for them a species of religion, and the majority its
ministering prophet.

Thus intellectual authority will be different, but it will not be diminished;
and far from thinking that it will disappear, I augur that it may readily
acquire too much preponderance and confine the action of private judgment
within narrower limits than are suited to either the greatness or the happiness
of the human race. In the principle of equality I very clearly discern
two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts,
the other prohibiting him from thinking at all. And I perceive how, under
the dominion of certain laws, democracy extinguish that of the mind to
which a democratic social condition is favorable; so that, after having
broken all the bondage once imposed on it by ranks or by men, the human
mind would be closely fettered to the general will of the greatest number.

If the absolute power of a majority were to be substituted by democratic
nations for all the different powers that checked or retarded overmuch
the energy of individual minds, the evil would only have changed character.
Men would not have found the means of independent life; they would simply
have discovered (no easy task) a new physiognomy of servitude. There is,
and I cannot repeat it too often, there is here matter for profound reflection
to those who look on freedom of thought as a holy thing and who hate not
only the despot, but despotism. For myself, when I feel the hand of power
lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me; and I
am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out
to me by the arms of a million men.